


Grasping Truth

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Radiant Dawn Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Facing down Ashera, it's hard not to reflect on how far they've come and the steps that brought them there.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Grasping Truth

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Scores of Heroes zine! The idea was to write about a song in less than 1000 words, so this piece was pretty brief but also pretty fun

The day when Ike told his father to give him another chance at becoming a mercenary seemed so long ago now, but so recent at the same time.

Since then, it felt like he’d spent most of his life fighting for something or other: for money, for Crimea, for laguz, and now for the future of Tellius itself. Every moment was spent frantically scrambling for the next breath, and each step took him closer to the end of another’s life.

Ike thrived on chaos. It was only natural that he would support Yune and challenge Ashera. His whole livelihood depended, and always had, on the existence of chaos. In a way, he was part of the ‘problem’ Ashera stood against.

But at the same time… he wasn’t the kind of person who revelled in chaos for the sake of it; he was no Ashnard. No, Ike saw himself as the kind of person who saw chaos, existed within it, and restored order in a way that mattered.

Ashera’s idea of order wasn’t something he could get behind. The war of the previous months was senseless slaughter, yes, but he had no interest in the world Ashera envisioned for them. People being forced to be orderly… a lack of choice was nothing more than false order.

After so many years of fighting, Ike was ready to put down his sword, but there was one final foe to strike down first.

-

Facing down Ashera’s judgement, Sanaki couldn’t help but think about how hypocritical the Goddess truly was.

Ashera inspired devotion to her kind of order, but Sanaki didn’t think that loyalty meant all that much. It certainly didn’t do anything for the kind of order present in the world; so many people had lost so much stability due to acts committed in her name.

Sephiran… Lehran and Zelgius were both people who dedicated their lives to protecting Sanaki. And now both of them were dead just because they followed Ashera to the end.

Begnion had fallen to ruin and committed unknowable and uncountable atrocities after they fought war after war in Ashera’s name. Sanaki could barely imagine how many had suffered in the name of order.

Children left parentless, villages left without food… Orphans left sickly in the streets, parents whose children never returned. Wealth wasted on an ideal that Begnion never could have hoped to live up to. It sickened her to think of it, to know how she had willingly and unwillingly contributed to so much pain.

Ashera claimed to stand for order, but all she’d done was abandon a world to fight over the scraps of a once admirable creed. It had to end.

-

Leanne was a heron, and she knew what that was supposed to mean– she was meant to stand for order in every possible form. Her entire life, her being, reveled in order. In the past weeks since the world turned to stone, there was an ease to her movements she hadn’t felt since Serenes burned.

There was, on the face of things, no reason for her to stand on the side of chaos. She’d lost so many people to that very thing: most of her tribe, killed in the flames of greed and hatred. Her sister, killed slowly and cruelly in an attempt to release Yune from the Medallion.

Now Yune was free, and Leanne was probably meant to break ranks and join Ashera. If she were to follow the feelings that were imbued in every feather of her wings, every inch of her body, she would be there.

But she couldn’t do that. All those things she’d lost to chaos and violence… those acts were not perpetrated by the people she sang for now. No, the people who had watched Serenes burn and delighted in the plight of her people were those who claimed Ashera as their Goddess. They stood for an order that supported so many things Leanne could not.

If she stood with order, she stood to lose what little she had left– her brothers, Naesala, and all the people who had been so kind and caring since her reawakening. If nothing else, she would protect them, and their right to a future filled with order and chaos in equal measure.

-

It was time for the tyrant’s hold on Tellius to cease.

Stefan could barely contain his fury as he levelled his sword to prepare a strike against Ashera. This was the Goddess who had created a world where people like him were demonised from the moment they were born.

How many had suffered in the name of this foul Goddess? Stefan needed only to cast his gaze around the chamber to answer that– Soren fought at Ike’s side, and to his right stood Micaiah. The people who protected this Goddess loathed each and every one of the people he would die to protect for their mere existence, and he’d stand for it no longer.

Through fighting in the armies of beorc and laguz in recent years, Stefan had learned that the prejudice that supposedly came from on high was nothing but unnatural. Tellius had spent centuries taking cues from leaders who were nothing more than vile echoes of what their people deserved.

Tellius needed a fresh start, desperately. Years of suffering had to come to an end some day, and today was that day. Stefan was happy to get his head out of the sand and help bring that about.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a twitter @samariumwriting if you fancy watching me yell into a void about my work and occasionally my life!


End file.
